It was my daughter’s 7th birthday last week. I asked what she wanted, and she said she wanted to go to Africa. Since that wasn’t possible on short notice, we spent the weekend at Capitola Beach, an hour south of where we live. She seemed fine with that.

The beachfront at Capitola is dotted with candy-colored homes called Venetian Cottages. I find these really hard to draw convincingly, maybe because they are so brightly colored, they look unreal?This is the view of the cottages from the bridge, looking across the creek. Capitola Pier is in the background.

Another view from the bridge, this time looking away from the beach, towards the elevated railroad bridge which looks weathered and old and abandoned.

There’s a pretty popular restaurant called Dharma’s in Capitola. I love their spring rolls, and I love that they have old-fashioned plastic animals that the kids can play with while they’re there.
This little beachfront home has a gorgeous garden with a sign that reads ‘Ann’s Garden’. I tried researching Ann and her garden, but came up with surprisingly little information (lots of photographs and paintings of Ann’s Garden, but very little else). If you know anything about Ann and her garden I’d love to hear about it.

You can see a full set of my Capitola Beach sketches from this and previous visits here.

Suhita, you ar a master of water colours. I have a request. If possible, please have someone videotape your whole process of sketching and painting and put it on You Tube or so. It will be good for ‘us mortals’!

Last summer, while you were sketching about at that same spot, I chatted with Ann’s (Anne’s?) niece. Yes, Ann is a real person and although she is 90+ she pretty much takes care of that garden herself. The niece lives in Nevada but every summer she and her family come and spend a month at the cottages.